In its petition to the FCC, Marriott and the hotel lobby argued that guests can use their smartphones or Mi-Fi devices to launch an attack against a hotel’s Wi-Fi network or threaten other guests’ privacy (by stealing their credit card data or other personal information). They also said that those gadgets can interfere with the hotel’s Wi-Fi, slowing down speeds for other customers.

Help me out here security folks, but this seems backwards to me. I use my phone hotspot connection when I want to stay off the hotel wifi, because anyone sitting on that network could be doing the exact same thing, right? So isn’t Marriott actually making it more dangerous for their guests who have that type of connection?

This is no joke. This is a risk all of us face, every single day, whether it’s with a work or a personal email account. We communicate electronically all the time. We share intimate details of our lives with the recipients of our messages assuming that it’ll never be public. It’s not social media after all. But if the network that stuff is sitting on gets hacked, it’s open season on whatever information you have there.